The Education Experiment: The Beginning

This is the post where it all begins.

I am Kristen, a 21-year-old senior at an all-women's college outside Philadelphia. Art History AP decided my major for me during my junior year of high school and it's still the perfect fit five years later. My passion for the history of art directed me towards Bryn Mawr College, a collegiate gothic paradise with rigorous academics and the most eccentric traditions one could ever encounter. Bryn Mawr boasts one of the top undergraduate history of art programs in the country and it has been both a joy and an honor to work with the professors employed here.

Nevertheless, the program has its limits and has never been able to provide an environment in which I could explore the intersections of art history and art production. For although I am an amateur art historian, I am also a particularly unreliable breed of visual artist with very little formal training. On the contrary, I have primarily taught myself the basics of visual art through life observation and a careful study of pre-existing artworks. And let's be honest, my art would be nothing of note without being hugely indebted to a vast amount of trial-and-error and an overactive imagination, which both fuel the entire enterprise. My art usually represents an odd amalgamation of traditional, recognizable artistic influences spiced up with elements of popular culture (including but not limited to graphic novels, film stills, and graffiti) and my own undefinable... charm. Let's call it charm.

Luckily, Bryn Mawr is up to the challenge to fill in any gaps in my education and offers an independent study option known as Praxis III, a course made up of two parts: 1) a "real world" placement, usually an internship the spans the duration of a semester and 2) a self-designed curriculum meant to supplement the practical experience provided by the placement.

And this is where we begin. I am embarking on a Praxis III quest that will combine my experiences as a history of art major with the hands-on experiences I'll gain as a student observer and teaching assistant at a nearby all girls school. I will be attending three different classes--Art I (a visual art foundations class for 9th graders), Painting/Drawing, and Art History AP--and examining the ways in which high school art pedagogy differs from that of a liberal arts college. As the semester progresses, I will be keeping this blog to chronicle my observations and my opinions, all of which will be injected with random tidbits of art trivia and visual treats. Additionally, I myself will be jumping back into the world of visual art production and creating art pieces to supplement, represent, and reflect my findings in the classroom.

So stick around! There are so many wonderful artistic curiosities awaiting us!

~ Kristen